AFL season 2014: The most even in recent memory

More than once in the past few years, the AFL has floated the possibility of extending the final eight to 10 or even more teams. The proposals have always been dispensed almost instantaneously with resounding cries from the rest of the football world about rewarding mediocrity. But if ever the league needed tangible evidence that wasn’t the case, season 2014 might well be its perfect case study.

Competition for spots in the finals is always intense but I cannot remember another year when so many teams boasted legitimate claims towards participation in September – the annual logjam of contenders this season more like a stampede.

The premiership battle will be much closer in 2014. Photo: Getty Images

In 2014 we don’t only have some obvious up-and-comers like North Melbourne and Gold Coast banging on the door to the finals. There’s a team in Essendon that was good enough in win-loss terms last year to finish only a game shy of the top four, yet because of the unprecedented penalties resulting from the supplements scandal didn’t compete. A team that finished ninth, Carlton, proved a more than adequate substitute, eliminating an opponent that had finished four spots and four wins higher on the ladder.

Then two more sides – West Coast and Adelaide – drastically underperformed in 2013, owing in no small part to injury. In terms of pure list quality, few would argue both aren’t in the top half of the competition.

To this simmering brew of uncertainty add the arrival of no fewer than six new coaches (Justin Leppitsch, Mark Thompson, Leon Cameron, Paul Roos, Alan Richardson and Adam Simpson) and the corresponding bounce new men at the helm often seem to produce, and you have a recipe for mid-table chaos.

It places an even greater premium this season on factors like the compromised fixture, with a favourable draw perhaps even more critical, and plain old luck avoiding injury. And it means there’s going to be some pretty decent sides out there whose finish of 11th or 12th might have been good enough in other years to snatch a spot in September.

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Being good enough to mount the premiership dais, however, is another matter altogether, and when it comes to the last two weekends of the AFL season, I don’t see a lot of change on the horizon.

Hawthorn, Fremantle, Geelong and Sydney for me remain just enough ahead of the rest, and aren’t about to go anywhere. And after having gone close enough before (its coach Ross Lyon now three times), I think Fremantle is about to break its premiership duck.

I tipped the Dockers to finish top four the past two seasons and see no reason to jump off now. Quite the reverse.

Freo’s list has lost nothing and gained two potentially valuable pick-ups in former Essendon key forward Scott Gumbleton and occasionally wayward Demon Colin Sylvia. Both could make a serious difference to the Dockers’ lowly 2013 ranking of 12th for points scored. And that’s all that is required to go one spot higher in 2014.

Gumbleton’s shocking injury history had another addition when he strained a hamstring in the NAB Challenge, but until then the quality and durability of his first pre-season in purple had been a talking point. He's certainly due a change of fortune, and with a solid summer behind him, could still offer the chop-out as a forward marking target skipper Matthew Pavlich needs.Sylvia, meanwhile, is yet another at-times troubled soul who has the capacity to finally realise his full potential under the coach’s iron first, and shapes as another ground-level goalkicking option in a team not short of them.

For all the hand-wringing about Lyon’s team’s defensive style not generating enough firepower and allowing opponents to stay in touch on the scoreboard, it’s too convenient to gloss over that in last year’s grand final Fremantle had five more shots at goal than did Hawthorn.

That doesn’t point to an inherent flaw in the make-up, and with the top four so close in ability, who would argue the motivational value of having missed out on grand final day being worth those couple of extra goals required? Certainly not Hawthorn, having successfully rebounded from its shattering 2012 loss.

As with most defending premiers, it’s psychology too that will determine whether the Hawks can land a third premiership on Alastair Clarkson’s watch, more specifically the capacity of veterans like Luke Hodge, Sam Mitchell, Brad Sewell and Jordan Lewis to get themselves up for another tilt.

That 2008 triumph is a long time ago now, but so ahead of schedule were the Hawks then that the benefits continue to be reaped, Hawthorn still have the fifth-oldest playing group in the competition.

Personnel? Of course the 60 goals the departed Lance Franklin contributed to the cause last year will have to be found from somewhere.

But the tally of almost 160 goals from Coleman medallist Jarryd Roughead, Jack Gunston and Luke Breust in 2013 is a more-than-handy starting point. And the valuable acquisition of St Kilda ruckman Ben McEvoy should mean we can expect quite a few more from David Hale.

As for Franklin, his donning the Sydney guernsey, and a forward tandem with Kurt Tippett in his first full season with the club, shapes as one of the more mouth-watering prospects of 2014.

The mere fact the Swans still made it to a preliminary final in a year when injuries subtracted the services of key players like Adam Goodes, Alex Johnson, Rhyce Shaw, Sam Reid and Lewis Roberts-Thomson says plenty.

Shane Mumford’s departure places great responsibility on the shoulders of Mike Pyke in the ruck, and the retirements of Jude Bolton, Marty Mattner and Mitch Morton and departures of Jesse White and Andrejs Everitt nibble away at the senior depth. But in terms of both quality and experience, Sydney is a combination with grand finalist written all over it.

It’s Geelong that lately seems to have taken over Sydney’s mantle as perennial contender most popularly tipped to come back to the field.

Not for the first time, I don’t see it.

Sure, some senior faces have departed, Paul Chapman, Joel Corey and James Podsiadly the most prominent. But Geelong continues to develop emerging talent brilliantly to stay fresh and in contention at the same time, and perhaps surprisingly, in terms of average age, is ranked only 10th in the AFL.

There’s an army of exciting young prospects ready to step up in 2014. Josh Caddy, Cameron Guthrie and Lincoln McCarthy, the last of those a potential replacement up forward for Chapman, could all prove important players for the Cats this season. And there’s at least another half-dozen where they came from.

Injuries haven’t been kind pre-season to the likes of Nathan Vardy, gone for the season already, skipper Joel Selwood, Allen Christensen and Steven Motlop, but even if the Cats start slowly, I’m pretty confident they’ll be there when the whips are cracking.

The rest of the eight? As we said, take your pick. But North Melbourne, having lost 10 games last year by 16 points or less, added the class of Nick Dal Santo to the mix, with a much more favourable fixture than last year and in terms of games played now with the third-most experienced list in the AFL, has to loom large.

So does Essendon, which in round 18 last season was playing for top spot on the ladder and appears to have a more potent forward structure with Jake Carlisle, Joe Daniher and Chapman in the mix, Michael Hurley a natural defender, and continues to build its midfield depth and class.

The Bombers do have a

tough-ish draw to overcome, as does Collingwood. But it’s hard to go past the out-and-out class in the Magpies’ midfield, the quartet of Scott Pendlebury, Dane Swan, Dayne Beams and Luke Ball (who played together only five times last season) just a starting point; young gun Taylor Adams adding more depth still, and Jesse White every chance of being able to take some heat off the overworked Travis Cloke up forward.

Richmond was good enough to finish the regular season fifth in 2013. Are the Tigers good enough to take that further? I’m still to be convinced. For the Tigers, much will depend on whether three players in particular – Brandon Ellis, Reece Conca and Nick Vlastuin – can go to another level.

One thing the Tigers can definitely depend upon, however, is a draw my analysis rated the fourth-handiest in the AFL when the fixture was released last October.

Richmond plays just one 2013 finalist twice, and five of its six road trips are against teams that finished outside the eight.

Nice work if you can get it, and significant enough to squeeze them into my eight.

Which leaves some apologising to be done to Carlton, Port Adelaide, West Coast and the Crows, all of which have the potential to leave this exercise looking way off the mark come September if things go right, while Gold Coast, I suspect, might still be another 12 months from finals contention.

But one thing I will declare with certainty is that whoever gets to play finals, we won’t ever have seen a cluster of up to half-a-dozen also-rans as capable as they’ll be in 2014.